Will Affirmative Action Stand? Supreme Court to Rule.

Thank you to my Mom Friend Nathalie for sending and resending me this link when the first few failed to open. Finally, it seems, the Supreme Court is going to review affirmative action programs in a dance balancing a presidential election year with a politically hot issue. Will limiting o eliminating affirmative action programs benefit Asian Americans who apply to college? Probably not, but it’s a step in the right direction.

For more posts on Why You Shouldn’t Identify as Asian When Applying to College, please go here.

Here is the full article by By MARK SHERMAN of the Associated Press.

The main points are here:

The Supreme Court is setting an election-season review of racial preference in college admissions, agreeing Tuesday to consider new limits on the contentious issue of affirmative action programs.

A challenge from a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas flagship campus will be the high court’s first look at affirmative action in higher education since its 2003 decision endorsing the use of race as a factor.

A broad ruling in favor of the student, Abigail Fisher, could threaten affirmative action programs at many of the nation’s public and private universities, said Vanderbilt University law professor Brian Fitzpatrick.

Justice Samuel Alito appears more hostile to affirmative action than his predecessor, Sandra Day O’Connor. For another, Justice Elena Kagan, who might be expected to vote with the court’s liberal-leaning justices in support of it, is not taking part in the case.

The Texas Legislature adopted the Top Ten Percent law after a federal appeals court ruling essentially barred the use of race in admissions. Texas said its updated policy does not use quotas, which the high court has previously rejected. Instead, it said it takes a Supreme Court-endorsed broader approach to enrollment, with an eye toward increasing the diversity of the student body.

Before adding race back into the mix, Texas’ student body was 21 percent African-American and Hispanic, according to court papers.

By 2007, the year before Fisher filed her lawsuit, African-Americans and Hispanics accounted for more than a quarter of the entering freshman class.

Fisher’s challenge says the Top Ten Percent law was working to increase diversity and that minority enrollment was higher than it had been under the earlier race-conscious system.